When we talk about domestic violence, we still expect bruises, broken bones, and a horror story about the police not showing up in time.

What we're not waiting for is a conversation about something just as damaging but more stealthy, more insidious: emotional abuse. Emotional abuse, domestic or otherwise, is violence with no visible battle scars.

Since the start of the pandemic, psych experts put emotional and mental abuse of intimate partners and children high on the list of things to look out for. The enforced isolation would be perfect for its proliferation.

But that's just talking about the last two years. Before that, and still going strong, we have one thing that really enables emotional abuse - it's the way society has normalised it. Normalised it to the point that even victims can be confused.

It's everywhere, but we're not really looking for it. That's just how things are. That's how people talk. (Bullies, bosses, colleagues, siblings, parents, teachers, religious leaders, state leaders are people who talk. Not just partners)

Every Breath You Take is a flat-out stalker song. Fans would tell Sting that it was their wedding song and the Police frontman would recoil. He knew he had written a deeply disturbing song. He was not afraid of getting into murky moral terrain in his writing, but he did not expect the lyrics to become matrimonial vows.

'Every step you take, I'll be watching you…Oh, can't you see, you belong to me?' Eyes on your every movement, attention to every action, possessiveness.

No, no it doesn't sound like a love song to me. It sounds ominous and as if a trenchcoat is involved.

Most survivors of emotional abuse never see the harm coming. The abusers can be charming and kind. They are very good at creating a false sense of security. You need them.

Or they need you else they can't go on. Only you can help them. Whatever it takes to keep you where you are, they will find the words.

And those words are everything, because controlling how you think is their game. They're not about fists and bloody noses.

Gaslighting is a much put-upon word these days and often misused, so let's set it in context here. Gaslighting involves doing or saying things that cause someone to question their sanity. It can be subtle, leaving room for doubt. The way you start second-guessing yourself may be entirely in your head. It's hard to say someone is doing it to you. It works well in scary movies.

Emotional abusers are big on gaslighting. Undermining the thoughts, feelings, impressions, ideas and beliefs of their victims is they way they cut them. That is to say, they cut them down. Down to size. Down to a manageable, manipulatable size.

There's something about the language and conversations around emotional abuse that makes it all seem abstruse and subjective. So, here is a list, a very small sample of a list, of what emotional abuse can entail.

Pre-list, remember, power is the determining factor. Not everything